Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!!  Today is an exciting day!  We have Pat McManus with Rockin' Prevention here for the afternoon.  This is a rock band that  uses music to teach kids about bully prevention and preventing use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs.  There are 15 high school kids who volunteered to come and help with the program.  The 4th grade seems a little excited about it!  I hope they come home and have lots to say!  This program was sponsored by our very own PTO!!

Language Arts - This week has been a Unit test week.  We are also sharing the book reports the students have.  I am also using this week as a "catch all" week.  I have had so many kids absent of Fridays that we are trying to make up tests.  We made up the spelling tests all ready, I am trying to catch them up on  end of week assessments.  We are doing more DEAR time and read aloud this week also. The kids are totally loving me reading Harry Potter to them.  I am sure it helps that I absolutely love reading them to the kids!   Next week we will go back to reading a story and having spelling tests.  We are heading into unit 5 which is the last unit in this book.  Then we will pick up the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and read it together and use the skills and strategies we have learned with this book.  I all ready have activities and things to do with it.  That will take us up to the end of the year!  Crazy thought!!

Math - We are working on taking a test over chapter 3 right now.  We started it today and will finish it tomorrow.  Monday we will spend class making corrections.  Next week we will skip to the back and cover chapter 13.  It is a quick chapter because  it has few lessons in it and not sure I cover all of them.  We focus on Perimeter and Area.  So I am covering a little bit of the geometry I need to cover.  It is really kind of a fun chapter plus if they understand area box they all ready know area!!  This chapter is a good breather between such heavy topics.  Plus area deals with multiplication.  The next heavy topic is division!!!

Social Studies - We took a test this week and worked on corrections over chapter 6! I was very impressed, we had 6 perfect papers AND several that missed one or two!  I would say this is a very successful chapter!!  Most of them did an awesome job labeling the map with the states of the region.  Those who struggled have another opportunity on the next chapter test to redeem themselves.  For the next test they will have to list the capitals also.  In this chapter we will talk about the Cherokee who had their homes in the Southeast,we will talk about Charleston, South Carolina and how the Civil War started there and why, we will also discuss cities of the Southeast and how they are still growing.  The Midwest is next. Please be sure to pay attention to your child's social studies project and when it is due.  IF they have a Southeast state they have due dates if  it is part of the Midwest, it will definitely be after Spring Break and I will get those dates out soon.

Thank you very much for the donations that were given to our Auction Basket and thank yo to Meg Haines for Producing the music video for our Silent Auction item.  The kids watched the video today and loved it!  The basket I feel is a very nice one!!  Hope to see you at the dinner and auction Saturday night!!

God Bless,
Mrs. Sickels